Bringing your dog to Portugal by air: Wendy’s experience.
Firstly I needed to book a flight which is easy if you have 1 dog but if you have 3 like I did it was a little more difficult. Border Collies. Several airlines would only take two and the third would then go on the same plane and everything but would have to go as cargo which is 3 or sometimes 4 times the price. I sought the comanies that flew dogs from which airport to where on the which is easy to use and folow. Armed with telephone numbers and e mails I set about getting prices.
The long and short of it all is that if you accompany your dogs on the same flight they can go as excess baggage. If you are not able to fly with them they go Cargo.
Personally I paid £420 for 3 dogs to fly from Gatwick to Faro. Charged at so much a kilo. Each cage weighed 10kg and the dog 20kg approx. The prices varied greatly and ideally i wanted to fly them to Lisbon but it was £1,000. I booked with which is basically British Airways but if you book direct with BA again it is double the cost! I was told that Gatwick is much more dog friendly than Heathrow too.
I booked my seat and paid for it but I could not pay for the dogs as you can’t book excess baggage in before getting to the airport. So all I had was reference numbers to pass over the desk as space is reserved for you in the hold.
Also on the Defra site it gives the sizes of the cages that you need, I ordered these on the internet and they came in 2 days. If anyone is interested I have one for sale that we will bring back to UK in February. Ample room for a collie big enough for a boxer size.
I went with a helper to the airport . All 3 cages stacked inside each other we parked got a trolley loaded the cages on top and pushed our way up slopes down lifts etc to the BA desk. As soon as they saw I had dogs I had one to one treatment, they looked at the ref number booked me in then took us to the special scales and the cages were made up and weighed individually with the dogs. I left my helper at this stage with them on gaurd they were all in their cages. I was taken to another desk to pay, then another to collect other paperwork then back to the dogs to offer last waters and wait for the baggage handlers to arrive. 3 men came with 2 large trolleys and my girls were gone.
As I got to the gate before you board I was able to see them sitting on the tarmac all safe and either sitting or laying watching procedures. i saw them being loaded and handled extremelycarefully up the conveyor into the plane. The next I saw of them was as I got off the plane they were again on the tarmac already unloaded looking very relaxed and I was so pleased to see them all looking this way. I had hand lugguage only so I raced through passport control and the where the cases came through and asked a lady in best portuguese where my dogs would be. As she pointed to these double doors they opened and they were wheeled in. My husband was waiting for me in arrivals with our car. The whole journey went very smoothly. The girls were not stressed at anytime I saw them and for country gals that do not have cages at all in the home they coped with that and the airport immpeccably.
I would reccommend travel this way to anyone that was thinking about it and it is true that the owners worry much more than the dogs do.
One thing, after all my dog passports and vet checks and vets signing passports. Not once at anytime were the passports looked at by anyone the Uk or Portugal end.
Many thanks to Wendy (aka wendyz) for allowing us to reproduce her original post on
Hello we am thinking of taking our Golden Retiever to Faro (ideally) from London around a bout 4th September to return around about 25th September.
Can you tell me how I get beyond the standard booking procedure to discus this with the airline?
Many thanks
Robin Carlyle